Moss grows in Sonoma County in North­ern California

I’m in North­ern Cal­i­for­nia (Wal­nut Creek) vis­it­ing my brother Scott and his wife Kate over the hol­i­days. Yes­ter­day we spent the night in Healds­burg at the Grape Leaf Inn (www​.grape​leafinn​.com). It rains a lot more up here than in SoCal, there­fore you see a lot of moss and no bougainvil­lea. Moss seemed a good sub­ject for win­ter; noth­ing else is thriv­ing up here right now. I have zero under­stand­ing of moss, as I have vir­tu­ally no shade in my SoCal gar­den. My research yielded the fol­low­ing facts. There are 15,000 species world­wide. The fuzzy green stuff thrives in acid rich or com­pacted or shaded or poorly drained soil. It’s also a great soil builder requir­ing no mow­ing, dehatch­ing, fer­til­iz­ing or pes­ti­cides — but plenty of weed­ing. Moss has no vas­cu­lar sys­tem or roots but absorbs water directly from the air or thru rainfall.

Now this is the fun stuff: stored dry moss can be dor­mant for years and come back with water. To plant moss, remove all plants and sprin­kle the soil with pow­dered sul­fur or even pow­dered milk. Lay patches of moss or sprin­kle moss spores onto wet ground and irri­gate reg­u­larly. You can also make a moss milk­shake by mix­ing half moss and half but­ter­milk or beer in a blender. This con­coc­tion can be painted on prac­ti­cally any­thing porous from bricks to rocks, ter­ra­cotta, cement pots or troughs — pro­vide shade — you should see results in about a month.

Sources for moss (local SoCal nurs­eries will sell it too!): www​.mossacres​.com, www​.out​side​pride​.com, www​.springhill​.com

If any­one is trav­el­ing to wine coun­try and needs sug­ges­tions, drop me a line — what I don’t know my brother does!